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The best food for feeding bees in the winter is, of course, the one they make for themselves: their own honey.
Besides sugars, honey contains nutrients that keep the colony healthy, strong and better able to fight off parasites. With enough honey, most hives stand a good chance of surviving the winter until the spring nectar flow. However, as the fall …

Certain plant microRNAs slow development to keep workers small and sterile
PLOS
Working model for the cross-kingdom transfer of plant microRNAs in the regulation
of honeybee development. For larvae that are destined to become queens, royal jelly is
fed in copious amounts to drive the development of the royal phenotype. For
worker-destined larvae, substantial quantities of plant microRNAs are absorbed when
consuming beebread and pollen, which …

Michigan State University
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Seemingly indestructible Varroa mites have decimated honeybee populations and are a primary cause of colony collapse disorder, or CCD.
Michigan State University scientists have found genetic holes in the pests' armor that could potentially reduce or eliminate the marauding invaders. The team's results, published in the current issue of Insect Science, have identified four …

University of Guelph professor discovered that exposure to thiamethoxam reduces the chances
of a bumblebee queen starting a new colony by more than a quarter.
University of Guelph
Bumblebees are less able to start colonies when exposed to a common neonicotinoid pesticide, according to a new University of Guelph study.
Prof. Nigel Raine has discovered that exposure to thiamethoxam reduces the chances of a …

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Honey bees that consistently fail to respond to obvious social cues share something fundamental with autistic humans, researchers report in a new study. Genes most closely associated with autism spectrum disorders in humans are regulated differently in unresponsive honey bees than in their more responsive nest mates, the study found.
The findings, reported in …

Bumble bees, like this one, are among the bee species most vulnerable to
increases in temperature. Photo: Elsa Youngsteadt. Click to enlarge.
A new study from North Carolina State University finds that common wild bee species decline as urban temperatures increase.
“We looked at 15 of the most common bee species in southeastern cities and – through fieldwork and labwork – found that …

Bees lacking insect equivalent of the cerebral cortex may still be able to learn odors
Honey bees may not need key brain structures known as mushroom bodies in order to learn complex associations between odors and rewards, according to new research published in PLOS Computational Biology.
The new findings surprised the research team because mushroom bodies are thought to be essential for …

National Monitoring Plan for Native Bees - The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has scheduled a public listening session for June 28, 2017 in Washington, DC to "... discuss a strategy to monitor native bees in the United States ..." - Specifically, the session is intended to address the following: "... Why is a national monitoring plan …